Recently, the lovely Ellie started a website for women to share their stories of addiction and recovery. I immediately threw myself at her and she let me join in as a co-moderator.
So this week, it’s my turn to share the first part of my “what it was like” story. Please come on over, and give a thought to sharing your story, too.
So, after a weekend of struggling with this, this is where I am. The issue is personally painful still and also interesting, in that it highlights the intersection between my public and private lives. As I said on Friday, I want the two to be seamless; at the same time my writing life necessarily offers only my perspective — events as I alone see them. Add to that that I choose to write anonymously, to protect my family from unwanted attention; they, however, do have full access to this site. So it is a weird situation all around, neither fully anonymous nor fully public.
Like so many other bloggers, I write because I feel compelled to; it offers connections in my all-too-stretched-out social world; it is what we do in the 21st century instead of pony express or meeting on the town promenade. The process of writing also helps me be a more thoughtful person and by inviting comments it helps me understand myself and others better, too. It is a virtual record of Mimi as she grows, and of my recovery as it, too, grows. I can use this as a forum to share my life in the West with my relatives in the East. It also has helped me find, and participate in the lives of, other people in my situation. Mothers in recovery is still a pretty esoteric group, and we rely on each other powerfully.
Although I would suggest that every writer ever has drawn on her life for inspiration, it will never be my intention to live my life in such a way as to generate things to write about. These things happened, in all the decades I lived before I started this, and still happen, every day. I participate, observe, photograph, write. I hope it is ultimately for the better.
In the end, I value my human relationships more than the blog, if it had to come to that, but I hope it doesn’t. I have exaggerated for effect before, and I apologize very much for that, and I will be extra careful not to do that in the future. I do not think this blog is fundamentally mean-spirited. It is not gentle, but I just don’t think it is vicious in word or tone. I do not intend to harm any real person in my life (celebrities and other people who willingly put themselves on TV are fair game to me) and if I fail to see that I do so, by all means call my attention to it. I will appreciate it.
I received a call earlier from someone I hurt deeply with this blog, someone whom I would never want to harm, but I did. That is an amends I will face privately. Here, in the same public forum in which I did the damage, I mention it because I want to say: please remember to be gentle with the feelings of others. I wasn’t, and that wouldn’t be bad if it had hurt only me, but it hurt someone who wasn’t even here to take part in the conversation.
I’ve spent the evening thinking about what this blog is all about. It was started as a place to chronicle life post-rehab. It is growing into a community; I am connecting with people whom I would not have met otherwise. In sharing my own story, though, I’ve blurred the line between the life I share on this blog and the one I actually live. I can’t forget what I am, though, not ever. When I got off the phone my first desire was to ask Jon to open the locked-up suitcase in the garage that contains my old prescriptions so I could have one, just one, tranquilizer. It’s all about numbness for us, about refusing to accept that I am going to be sitting up all night with a sick conscience.
My name is Robin, but that is not my first name. My husband’s name isn’t Jon, and my daughter’s name isn’t Mimi. I know I am not the first blogger to shield her family behind false names; that is common. This isn’t about that. This is about honesty and selfishness and consideration. Honesty is an odd concept to discuss in an anonymous forum, but I know that while I was busy applauding myself for my emotional honesty, I failed the simple truths that must be maintained in order to claim ANY kind of integrity. I have not, as we say in recovery, been impeccable with word and deed.
My blog-world is only as healthy as my real-world, and both could use some attention. Be careful out there.
